Native Advertising Will Save Us All. Maybe.

Native ads, driven by startups that are careful, picky snobs (for good reason), could change online advertising for the better. Except for one little problem: They don’t scale.

But wait, there’s a silver lining:

That may not be the case forever. “Mass customization is the new paradigm,” Cunningham said. He expects that one or two major players — likely Facebook — will eventually dominate native ads across many platforms, making them easier to purchase at mass scale.

But wait, if you use Facebook ads on other platforms, wouldn’t they be less native on other platforms? The article continues:

The tipping point will be when large brands begin to ask how they can optimize their creative work for native ads before they build it, rather than backward engineer it into this new format. For those of us who absolutely detest traditional display ads this can’t come soon enough.